Business Jet Traveler

One of Philadelphia’s crown jewels is sporting a new gem. Actually, an old one, since what used to be Torresdale-Frankford Country Club dates to a 1921 design by Donald Ross. Today it’s part of the Union League, the prestigious downtown club founded in 1862 whose South Broad Street home offers a classic example of Second Empire architecture.

At Fakanal Etterem (the name means “wooden spoon”) in Budapest’s bustling, historic Vasacsarnok Central Market, you can dine on delicious versions of such Hungarian specialties as savory gulyas (goulash), paprikas chicken, and nokedli (gnocchi). You can also go upstairs for a basic cooking course and learn how to prepare these dishes yourself.

After five years of slow growth, preowned-market sales volume headed into negative territory last year. Aviation data service JetNet reports fewer retail transactions were conducted in 2015 than in 2014, the first such decrease since 2009. Last year, 2,458 preowned business jets were sold, says JetNet, versus 2,569 in 2014—a 4.3 percent decline.

Our airliner was on final approach to New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport when a flight attendant decided to grab a mic and start warbling Willie Nelson’s country-western ballad “Crazy.” Not Nelson’s own smooth-as-pudding rendition of the song or the plaintive Patsy Cline version, but rather a caterwauling, off-pitch, screeching interpretation that, as the airplane descended, probably had most of the cats in North Jersey looking to the night sky with alarm.

Dan Drohan serves as chairman and CEO of Solairus Aviation, an aircraft-management and charter company he founded in 2008, just as the Great Recession began. Despite that bad timing, the firm has prospered and now has more than 100 aircraft in its managed fleet.

As Gulfstream develops the G600 business jet, the company’s designers have been working to refine the cabin. The designers depend on feedback from customers and crew, and with the G600 they have used that feedback to help them develop a comfortable, ergonomically optimized space. The company provides

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Quote/Unquote

““We didn’t take no fancy rock-star airplane [to get here]. [Pause.] All right, all right, we did take a fancy rock-star airplane. But we thought about driving.”
—Bruce Springsteen, talking to the audience during an April 23, 1988 concert at Los Angeles Sports Arena
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